Significantly improve talent diversity, move away from the current design with many mandatory or near-mandatory talents
Give her multiple different playstyles
Avoid “single opener” builds
Emphasize combos instead of Q spam
Base Hero changes:
Crippling Poison made baseline
Ambush Armor reduction increased from 10 to 15
Blade Flurry Energy cost reduced from 40 to 30
Eviscerate Energy cost reduced from 25 to 15
Garrote Silence reduced from 2.5 to 2.25 seconds
Cloak of Shadows no longer purges Damage over Time effects, but grants 40% increased Movement Speed for its duration.
Talents
Level 1
Subtlety (D) - If Vanish is broken by enemy damage, reduce its cooldown by 1.5 seconds.
Dexterity (W) - Increase the radius of Blade Flurry by 15%. If at least 2 enemy Heroes are hit, reduce its cooldown by 1 second.
Combat Readniess (E) - Eviscerate grants Valeera 20 Physical Armor per Combo Point spent for 4 seconds, up to 60.
Level 4
Initiative (D) - Ambush, Cheap Shot, and Garrote each have their Energy costs reduced by 10 and generate an additional Combo Point.
Snakeblood (D) - Vanish purges all damage over time effects and grants 25 Spell Armor while active.
Vendetta (D) - Ambush, Cheap Shot, and Garrote Reveal their target to Valeera for 10 seconds. Basic Attacks against Revealed enemy Heroes deal 25% increased damage.
Level 7
Assassinate (D) - Ambush, Cheap Shot, and Garrote deal an additional 110 damage against isolated enemy Heroes.
Fatal Finesse (W) - Blade Flurry throws out knives dealing 52 damage at up to 3 nearby enemies within 4.5 range, prioritizing Heroes. Maximum one Combo Point per Hero per cast.
Slice and Dice (E) - Eviscerate increases Valeera’s Attack Speed by 50% for 1.5 seconds per Combo Point spent. Basic Attacks restore 2 Energy.
Level 13
Leeching Poison (1) - Basic Attacks against Heroes affected by Crippling Poison restore 30 Health. Increase Crippling Poison’s Slow by 10%.
Numbing Poison (Active) - Cooldown: 20 seconds | Activate to make Valeera’s next damaging Ability and subsequent Abilities within 4 seconds reduce enemy damage dealt by 40% for 3 seconds.
Wound Poison (Active) - Cooldown: 30 seconds | Activate to make Valeera’s next damaging Ability and subsequent Abilities within 4 seconds reduce enemy healing received by 50% for 4 seconds.
Level 16
Seal Fate (Q) - Sinister Strike deals 50% additional damage and generates an additional Combo Point when used against Silenced, Rooted, or Stunned enemy Heroes.
Death From Above (D-Q) - Ambush’s teleport range is increased to 7 and it can be teleported with immediately upon entering Stealth.
Kidney Shot (E) - Casting Eviscerate with at least 3 Combo Points roots the target for 0.5 seconds. Can only occur once per target every 10 seconds.
Level 20
Black Powder (R1) - Smoke Bomb’s initial cast deals 160 damage in its area, Blinding and drastically reducing the vision of enemy Heroes for 3 seconds.
Shadow Dance (R2) - Cloak of Shadows grants one free use of Ambush, Cheap Shot, or Garrote while it is active.
Kingsbane (1) - Valeera gains access to all her Level 13 Talents, and Crippling Poison is activated permanently.
Cold Blood (E) - Maximum Combo Points are increased to 5. Casting Eviscerate with 5 Combo Points deals an additional 20% damage.
Discussion
The idea is to create 3 distinct playstyles, a sneaky ambush assassin (Assassinate at 7, DFA at 16), a poison-spreading disabler (Dex at 1, Fatal Finesse at 7, Kingsbane at 20), and a more scrappy brawler (Combat Readiness at 1, Slice and Dice at 7, Leeching Poison at 13).
I also tried to create some cool synergies between talents (eg: Vendetta at 4 to reveal so you can finish the target off with DFA at 16). The goal with Death From Above was to give Ambush some good non-CC utility, while giving some chase and surprise attack potential without making you feel forced to use Ambush in every situation.
I could talk a lot more about my thought process with all of this, so if you have questions feel free to ask.
Closing Thoughts
This is something I’ve been working on and iterating on for many years. Its possible I’ve overtuned her here, but my goal is to focus on the overall ideas rather than the exact numbers. Please let me know what you think of this, it’s something I’ve put a lot of effort into.
Yours is alot less complicated then the one I did a while back but I like how your fixes up all her builds.
Despite being my 3rd more played hero, valeeras builds drive me crazy. Her base kit want her to pick the right tool on the fly for any given situation but her talents want you to gradually throw all that away and just do one thing. All of her level 7s on live just feel bad. Mutilate is a very heavy trade-off, fatal finesse just doesn’t do very much, and slice and dice is significantly less effective on people walking away from you.
I actually love Slice and Dice for Garrote build and level 7 is when I really start hunting folks down. It combos well with lvl4 Hemorrhage, and if you go Crippling Poison at Lvl 1, people aren’t getting away from you before you get those 3 attacks off.
What I would like to see is for them to take a look at making an Ambush mythic quest. Ambush has always been a low % pick since the hero came out. Other builds are just way more effective.
There are so many ways you could go with an ambush stacking quest, it could be a lot of fun. Maybe after 10 or 15 Ambushes on players without dying, you unlock Cold Blood with an extra damage modifier on a 90 second cd. Just a thought.
The problem I have with an ambush quest is you are basically being incentivized to spam her worst opener until you finally get an upgrade that makes it good.
Back in the early days of Valeera the Assassinate + Death From Above combo where you could hop onto somebody from halfway across the screen to punish them was the main thing that made it appealing. When the rework happened and she got a teleport with garrote and cheap shot, it became pretty bad again.
The current ambush build is decent-ish because of the vanish CDR, but it takes until level 16 to come online which is way too late. Its also pretty outclassed by zeratul imo.
TBH I think cheap shot could maybe use a bit of love too, but it’s easy to turn it back into the “always use” opener it originally was. Maybe the solution is a bit more damage on it (only does like 40 iirc)
I like your list of overall goals, the poison row is pretty cool and having a talent that combines them all is nice.
Here’s a crazy / fun idea:
Make this baseline. Sounds strong yes, but hear me out. Building 5 combos is actually pretty hard to do especially in the early game and without the correct talents. If you nerfed sinister damage but allow 5 combos baseline it does the following things:
It delays potential burst reducing salt factor
it improves blade flurry’s attractiveness as all too often the extra combos from cleaving are wasted because you only have a max of 3
Combo builder talents can be put on the same row as CC talents forcing the player to make a meaningful choice, do you want more dmg or more CC, because you cant have both.
I see too that you’ve removed a lot of her energy regen talents. In my opinion, energy regen is fun. When playing a rogue in wow, each spec has their own unique way of building energy and it’s that difference that makes each spec feel different.
Here in HoTS, the energy regen talents are underperforming. I believe the reason they aren’t performing well is the way the Sinister Strike cooldown mechanic works. Miss your SS and you have minimal ways to spend energy. It feels clunky.
Therefore, if valeera were to be reworked, that mechanic needs to go. There’s been a few ideas floated on the forums but the one I like the most is:
SS has baseline low CD (1 second?)
is expensive (e.g. 35 energy)
Striking an enemy hero significantly reduces the cost of your next SS
This change does the following things:
Valeeras spell usage is gated by energy and combo points not cooldowns (the way a wow rogue should be)
The high baseline cost prevents her from becoming a melee tracer whilst still offering flexibility on engagement / disengage. Reducing HP could be a (potential) lever to pull to balance this change as it would be expected for a player to avoid damage thanks to her new mobility.
Energy regen talents would become more attractive (Thistle tea and adrenaline rush sound amazing now that you always have a way to spend it)
Gives blade flurry more credibility as you can now reposition yourself to hit multiple targets.
…
I would consider the above ideas to be fundamental for a rework. However, below are a few more ideas to throw into the melting pot:
Rupture rework: An activatable talent that significantly increases the damage of your next eviscerate (60-80%) but converts it into a 7s dot.
In the spirit of the Old School Cold Blood talent, boosting your Evis is fun, but by converting it into a DoT reduces it’s salt factor. Great option to deal damage to tanks on long fights or simply because you want someone to bleed out.
Poison applied by blade flurry increases the potency by (50-100%)
*Blade Flurry is an odd duck talent. Giving it a utility flare makes it more interesting. Does the player want to spend more energy to gain superior CC? Good synergy with your poison talent row.
I assume this person is a troll based on their other posts. I will say that removing mutilate is a pretty significant nerf to her burst damage, and eviscerate might actually need to hit a little harder without that. Picking up mutilate increases the damage of a single garrote->Q->Q->E combo by over 50%.
Its possible something like this could work. It would significantly change the way she’s played, and probably need extensive rebalancing as it increases her mobility by a LOT.
Partially. But there’s also the factor of Valeera not really having the necessary sustain or HP pool to stay in fights for a long time under most circumstances. You’re really aggressively focusing someone down and it either ends with them dying, them running away, or you dying in 90% of circumstances.
She struggles in team fights because ganks on 1 target is what her kit is built for. You can only shut down one hero at a time, she doesn’t do well against heroes who can fight back or kite her. Often just an aba hat on her target is enough to force her to retreat.
